What it is, and why it's important
The library community and its allied partners have provided at least one definition for metadata for their respective communities. Here are a couple of examples:

"A characterization or description documenting the identification, management, nature, use, or location
of information resources (data)." [The Society of American Archivists' A Glossary of Archival and Records
Terminology]

"Metadata is structured, encoded data that describe characeristics of information-bearing entities to aid in the
identification, discovery, assessment, and management of the described entities." [ALA Task Force on
Metadata, 1999]

To meet specific needs of a community or collection, a set of metadata elements (tags) known collectively as a schema is created that will neet the requirements.

Common charactertistics of metadata schemas

*a limited number of elements
*the name of the element
*the definition of the element
*element's criteria

The University of Alabama Digital Collections are cultural heritage items. Elements in schemas for cultural heritage collections have broad definitions and criteria so institutions may narrow definitions and set criteria to meet their needs.